Michelle Buteau is making comedy history on Netflix. It only took her 23 years.

NEW YORK ‒ In 2013, Michelle Buteau laid out a five-year plan for herself: have two kids, her own TV show, and a backyard in Brooklyn for composting.

Although she now lives in the Bronx, the “Survival of the Thickest” star has since manifested all of those things and much more, including the Netflix comedy special “Michelle Buteau: A Buteau-ful Mind at Radio City Music Hall” (now streaming).

“Look at that! I’m doing it,” Buteau says with a grin. “Composting is actually the hardest of all of that. I’m still figuring out what to do with eggshells and I don’t like fruit flies. I didn’t even realize I was manifesting, but it’s nice to be passionate about stuff. You don’t even have to be positive all the time, but just like something or someone – maybe yourself.”

Michelle Buteau calls out Dave Chappelle in new Netflix special

With this hourlong set, Buteau, 47, makes history as the first woman to film a comedy special at Radio City. The milestone is filled with “a rainbow of emotions” for the vivacious and unapologetic comedian, who was determined to make others feel “seen” by headlining the famed theater.

“I never asked my team, ‘Can I do this?’” Buteau says. “I was like, ‘How can you help me do this?’ I don’t want to hear ‘can’t.’ It’s insane. How do you exist as a Black, brown, queer, or fat person? You just do. Stop listening to people who want to keep you down.”

“Buteau-ful Mind” is the pièce de resistance after the “slow simmer” of Buteau's career: For nearly two decades, she hustled on the New York standup circuit, playing to rooms of just a few dozen people at venues such as Union Hall, Littlefield and The Slipper Room.

“You don’t get to Radio City without hours and hours of Slipper Room experience,” she says. “The love you have for those 30 people is the same love that translates to those 6,000. But you also have to advocate for yourself and other people. When I was doing bar shows, I could barely get a drink ticket. Now, I’m like, ‘This is what I need, and this is how I want people to feel.’”

Like 2020’s “Welcome to Buteautopia,” her latest special mines laughs from marriage, motherhood and marijuana. But Buteau also imbues her jokes with an ethos of inclusivity, as she declares her wish for everyone to feel “safe, secure” and “entertained” through her comedy. At one point, she smartly eviscerates comedian Dave Chappelle, who has doubled down on homophobic and transphobic rhetoric in recent years.

“I’m not saying you can’t say things – I’m just saying, ‘Can you make it funny?’ Because it doesn’t feel funny,” Buteau says. “You’re hurting people and you’re making it dangerous. And it’s not just Chappelle – it’s part of the culture that I don’t understand. When people say, ‘We can’t do what we used to do.’ Yeah! Slavery used to be legal, you guys. Sometimes we’ve got to move forward, and I’m sorry if it’s different, but wrap your little mind around it.”

Michelle Buteau turned to standup after 9/11: 'I might as well live'

Born in New Jersey to Caribbean parents, Buteau didn’t grow up with comedy ambitions. Instead, she aspired to be an entertainment journalist and started her career as a news producer for NBC in New York.

“For a while, co-workers were like, ‘You’re so funny! You should do standup,’” Buteau recalls. “I’ve always said I was too cute for an edit bay. A Black person with freckles? Are you kidding? Give me a window!”

Although she loved meeting new people out in the field, she grew depressed creating obituary reels and covering hard news. And three days after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, she performed her first standup set.

“When I was editing really sad stuff, I was like, ‘There’s so much death. I might as well live,’” Buteau says. “It sounds so stupid, but comedy saved me in a lot of ways. It helped me find my voice, and learn to speak up for myself and other people.”

For years, Buteau cut her teeth playing “really terrible road gigs.” (“I was like, ‘Am I eating dog food? Do people want me here? Everyone’s got their back turned to me.’”) In the meantime, she was steadily booking small movie roles with Kristen Stewart (“Happiest Season”) and Jennifer Lopez (“Marry Me”), eventually working her way to the top of the call sheet in Netflix’s “Survival of the Thickest,” which she also created and produced. The comedy series, which is based on her 2020 book, returns this coming year for Season 2.

“Michelle has worked for 23 years to build to this moment,” says Ilana Glazer, who co-starred with Buteau in last summer’s “Babes.” “People are really catching on and it’s no wonder because she is infectiously lovable and funny. The engine inside of her is seemingly infinite, and to see her get her flowers feels delicious.”

Going into the new year, Buteau wants to manifest “more”: more money, more projects, and more possibilities for her 5-year-old twins, Hazel and Otis, whom she welcomed via surrogate in 2019. (“I want the world for them,” she says. “I want them to know that they’re never losing, only learning.”) She credits her husband of 14 years, photographer Gijs van der Most, for pushing her to expect more for herself.

“It’s so corny, but he made me feel like anything was possible,” Buteau says. “My life changed when I had someone who truly understood me and what I could do. And the older I get, I just want to know that I’ve done everything I could to make me happy. I’m looking around at people like, why are we settling for anything? Don’t do that.

“Unless it’s airplane food. Then you don’t have a choice.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Michelle Buteau talks Netflix special, 'Survival of the Thickest'